As society becomes increasingly mobile, mobile electronic devices are enjoying a tidal wave of popularity and growth. Cell phones, wireless PDAs, wireless laptops and other mobile communication devices are making impressive inroads with mainstream customers. Constraining this growth and limiting customer satisfaction, however, is the lack of a truly adequate high-coverage-area, inexpensive, small, battery-efficient wireless communication system. Cellular data-transmit telephony-based solutions are far from power-efficient, and impose (relative) cost and size burdens that make them unusable.
A range of new technologies including low-distraction user interfaces, a new operating system platform, and new communications capabilities are being developed. Smart Personal Objects are everyday objects, such as clocks, pens, key-chains and billfolds, that are made smarter, more personalized and more useful through the use of special software. These everyday objects already exist in huge numbers, and, of course, all of them already have primary functions that people find valuable. They could also be extended to display not just time, but timely information—traffic information, schedule updates, news—anything that is time-critical and useful to people.
The ability of these objects to receive and utilize the information is partially dependent upon the signal receiving and transmitting capability of each object. For some applications, it is desirable to utilize some part of the FM frequency band to transmit information. However, potential problems can thwart the efficient utilization of the FM signals. For example, the inductance amount of some FM and higher frequency rod antennas (besides ferrite loss) tends to increase dramatically. The increased inductance usually necessitates a reduced capacitance. However, printed wire board (PWB) traces (or printed circuit board (PCB) traces) and integrated circuit (IC) packages, and receiver IC have capacitance that set the minimum capacitance achievable for a tank circuit. IC inputs are typically high impedance and the use of matching circuits tends to involve more loss. Matching circuits tend to include stray capacitance as well. Moreover, using any type of micro-strip matching is undesirable because of the very long wavelengths relative to the PWB dimensions of portable devices. Thus, a more robust antenna system is desirable for a mobile electronic device.